Ronald Gourgon stabbed a man in the chest and was sentenced for a murder that left a baby fatherless.

Now walking with a cane, the 67-year-old has a deteriorating valve in his heart, and not much longer to live. Recently paroled from an Ontario prison, he called on Dan Haley, a chaplain in Peterborough who runs a supportive housing centre that offers palliative care for ex-inmates.

Gourgon is thankful he’s found a quiet resting place to “kick the bucket.’’ Ready to die, all he seeks is forgiveness from the victim’s family.

Canada’s inmate population is aging. At the moment one in five federal inmates is 50 or older. Just over 20 per cent of the nearly 15,000 in custody on any given day fall into this category. That’s double the number from 10 years ago of prisoners over 50.

And many are dying.

Those who advocate for prisoners’ rights say facilities and procedures are not set up to accommodate the number of older inmates. They are particularly concerned about the number of inmates who require palliative care but end up dying in custody. Last year, of the 35 natural deaths in Canada’s federal prisons, 31 received palliative care in prison and four died in the community.

“It’s extraordinary that so many offenders die receiving palliative care in prison, as opposed to being released in the community and dying with dignity,” says Ivan Zinger, executive director in the office of the Correctional Investigator of Canada.

A controversial haven

Dan Haley offers terminally ill sex offenders and convicted murderers a quiet, non-judgmental space to live out their final days, even though the average person might ask why.

The men he supports at his transition house often have no place else to turn, and they don’t want to die in an institution.

Haley, 58, is executive director of the Peterborough Community Chaplaincy, a non-profit that operates a 10-bed supportive living space that helps reintegrate offenders released from custody, mostly from federal prisons in Ontario.

Roughly 20 to 30 former inmates, many of them sex offenders, go through the transition house each year. The majority are healthy, but since 2007, a total of 14 of them have been terminal cases. Twelve have already died, including two in the last few months. Currently two terminally ill offenders live in the house.

Haley knows that what he’s doing is extremely controversial, and hard for people in mainstream society to accept.

“ ‘Do you know what this no-good so-and-so did that landed him behind bars? Why don’t you just leave him to rot in prison?’ ’’ Those are the comments he hears from some prison staff, police and members of the public when they learn about his work.

Haley hasn’t always been an angel himself: At age 30 he was a raging alcoholic who abused his wife and son. He later facilitated Alcoholics Anonymous sessions in prisons, though never an inmate himself.

Haley, who is Pentecostal, was moved by what he saw during his prison visits. He became a chaplain about 20 years ago.

One of the conditions he sets for his transition house residents is that they repent, and express “accountability’’ for their crimes. Haley wants to see them demonstrate genuine remorse for their victims and the lives they’ve shattered.

Before they leave this earth, “they need to get their house in order, before they go meet with the Big Guy,’’ Haley says.

He believes that palliative inmates should have the right to die in the community, if they so wish, arguing that prisons aren’t the places for end-of-life care.

The transition house has volunteers who have hospice training, and who serve as escorts when residents want to go to the grocery store or go for a walk. Access to a doctor and nurses, as well as referrals to counselling and employment advice, are among the other services provided to able-bodied and palliative residents alike.

Lucas Oleniuk
/ Toronto Star

Convicted murderer Ronald Gourgon has a cigarette inside the smoking shack beside Dan Haley's transitional home in Peterborough, where the convicted murderer is living out his final days.

Personal support workers tend to residents needing help with tasks such as showering, shaving, and changing and cleaning sheets.

A killer on his deathbed

Ronald Gourgon, a “lifer’’ and recent parolee, served time after stabbing his ex-manager Andreas Stamatakis to death in his chest in 1978.

Following what Gourgon says was a work-related dispute, he broke into Stamatakis’s Vancouver home, confined him, his wife and an older relative, and tried to get into the safe. In the attack, Gourgon cut Stamatakis’s aorta, causing him to bleed to death.

It was mayhem on the residential street that morning.

Stamatakis’s wife was also seriously injured. According to news reports at the time, she managed to free herself during the attack, jump out of her house window, land on the family car, and run to another neighbour’s house screaming for help.

A neighbour jumped from his own bed and ran outside to aid her. According to the reports, the neighbour, still in his pajamas, ran across the street to where Gourgon was kneeling over the hysterical woman on another porch.

The neighbour got into a fist fight with Gourgon. As the two struggled and fell to the pavement, Gourgon was knocked unconscious. A hunting knife was later found at the scene, according to reports.

The victims’ 1-year-old baby, who was home at the time, wasn’t hurt.

Gourgon was later convicted and imprisoned for second-degree murder, as was his female accomplice. He was paroled for several years, but was recently thrown back in prison for a parole violation: consuming alcohol.

Now suffering with a terminal heart ailment, Gourgon is a shell of his former self.

If he could speak to the widow, Gourgon says “I’d ask for her forgiveness, and I would say I’m deeply, deeply sorry this ever happened to begin with.’’

Gourgon is prohibited from contacting the victims, but plans to write a letter that could perhaps be delivered to them after he dies. In it, he says, he’ll express his shame to them, and try to explain why he did what he did.

He was “young, foolish and crazy’’ when he committed the offences, he says in an interview.

“It was pure rage on my part, and once I got into that frame of mind … I took off like a bat out of hell and exploded.’’

He later adds: “It took me a long time in prison even to kill a fly after that.”

It’s unclear how much longer he has to live. In early 2012 a cardiologist discovered Gourgon’s heart problem, and gave him six months to a year. He’s a few months past the most optimistic outlook, but his illness has taken a toll.

A recent visitor had to help him up off the couch because Gourgon couldn’t stand up on his own. Formerly five foot eight and 213 pounds, he lost about a half-inch in height, and is now down to 126 pounds. The change started as his health began deteriorating in 2012.

Gourgon was initially referred to Haley by Kate Johnson, at the time chaplain of Pittsburgh Institution, a minimum-security prison northeast of Kingston where Gourgon was being held. The parole board gave the final OK.

Gourgon arrived at the transition house in February.

His room is sparsely decorated with a bed, reclining chair, fridge, television set and armoire, belongings Ronald paid for out of his savings. He gets about $250 a month from the Canada Pension Plan.

He has a “do not resuscitate’’ order on his door. Another resident who died of cancer a few weeks ago had a similar notice in his room.

Seated in the living room area of the house, his cane at his side, Gourgon says he is prepared for the end.

“I’m looking forward to dying,” he says, in a matter-of fact-tone. “I know I’m dying. Being Christian, where I’m going is a heck of a lot better than where I am.’’

He calls the transition house a more peaceful and dignified setting than prison, and the medical attention is better than at Pittsburgh, where he says there were only a few doctors for hundreds of inmates.

Gourgon has four daughters and two ex-wives, but has lost touch with all despite placing a newspaper ad and looking online for the daughters.

He says Haley is his “rock.”

‘Parole by exception’

Offenders are referred to the transition house typically by parole officers who work inside prisons. Corrections Canada pays about $50 to $150 a day each for six of the transition house beds, Haley says.

Some of the offenders have been granted full parole by the National Parole Board of Canada.

A few are “parole by exception’’ cases that fall under a section of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that allows compassionate release for terminally ill offenders, subject to the parole board’s discretion.

Others have served two-thirds of their sentences and are out on statutory release.

And a small portion have served their full sentence and pay about $550 a month rent for their room and board.

One key difference between the palliative care inside Pittsburgh, and what’s offered to residents at the transition house, is Haley’s volunteers. Inmates “get the attention they need,” Johnson says. “The volunteers go and sit with the men if they’re dying in hospital.”

In the main, the palliative cases Haley gets are just sick, tired, and in many instances aging men who just want to die, he says.

Not all terminal cases qualify for the transition house. One inmate, James Hutchison, who murdered two cops in the 1970s, was rejected by Haley because of the furor it would have caused among police and parole officers. He died of cancer at 83, behind bars.

Explains David Byrne, director of programs with Haley’s chaplaincy: “There’s a limit to what we can do and still be considered an organization working for the goodwill of the community.”

A different ending

There are some transition house residents whose stories end on an uplifting note.

“Steve” was in prison for a number of crimes including sexually assaulting his daughters. (His real name isn’t being used for this story because it would identify his victims.) He was dying from lung cancer and appeared before the parole board in 2007 seeking early release because of illness.

A victim of abuse himself as a young person, as an adult Steve abused his own daughters.

When one of the daughters found out he was dying in prison, she did something unexpected: she wrote to the parole board asking that her father be released on full parole from Bath Institution, a medium-security prison west of Kingston. She appeared at the parole hearing, as did Haley.

Steve was released that day, and Haley brought him to the transition house.

Haley and Byrne recall how terrified Steve was about dying. At one point during his stay, Steve was sitting on his bed, refusing to lie down, fearing that if he did he’d never get up again.

“He asked me, ‘Where am I going to go after I die?’ ” Byrne recalls.

About three months after his prison release, Steve’s daughter reached out, and asked to meet up with her father. The terms of his parole barred contact with the daughter, but a parole officer lifted the prohibition after the daughter’s request.

Soon afterward, with Haley present, father and daughter met for about seven hours in a Peterborough church.

“They had dinner, talked, and worked through some things,” Haley recalls.

Steve apologized to his daughter for the terrible harm he’d done to the family. After that meeting the daughter came and visited him several times.

When Steve died in 2010, both of his daughters came to Peterborough for the funeral, as did his ex-wife. Haley attended too.

The daughter who attended the parole hearing gave a powerful address during the funeral. She talked openly about the abuse, adding that her father had said he was sorry, and that she forgave him.

Says Haley: “Two words: ‘I’m sorry.’ They often set victims free.”

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